Falco: The Dark Guardian. Sandra Marton

different. They turned to me and I did what I had to do.”

      “As I am turning to you, mio figlio, and asking that you do what must be done.”

      Falco’s face hardened. “You want some names and phone numbers, fine. Otherwise, I’m out of here.”

      Cesare didn’t answer. Falco snorted, turned on his heel, headed for the door again, changed his mind and decided to exit through the French doors hidden by the heavy drapes. The mood he was in, the last thing he wanted was to risk running in to his mother or his sisters.

      “Wait.” His father hurried after him. “Take the folder. Everything you need is in it.”

      Falco grabbed the folder. It was easier than arguing.

      By the time he’d taxied to his mid-sixties town house, he’d come up with the names of four men who could do this job and do it well. Once home, he poured a brandy, took the folder and his cell phone and headed outside to his walled garden. It was close to sunset; the air was chill but he liked it out here, with the noise of Manhattan shut away.

      There was nothing of much use in the folder. Stuff about the movie; a letter from the producer to Cesare.

      And the pictures. The one with her in lace. The markedup duplicate. And another that his father had not shown him, a photo of Bissette standing on a beach, looking over her shoulder at the camera. No lace. No stiletto heels. She was dressed in a T-shirt and shorts.

      Falco put the three pictures on the top of a glass table and looked from one to the other.

      The one of her sexy and mysterious was a turn-on if you liked that kind of thing. He didn’t. Yeah, he liked crimson and lace and stiletto heels well enough; was there a man who didn’t? But the pose was blatantly phony. The smile was false. The woman looking at the camera had no substance. She might have been looking at a million guys instead of him.

      The mutilated picture made his gut knot. It was an outright threat, crude but effective.

      The third photo was the one that caught him. It was unselfconscious. Unposed. A simple shot of a beautiful woman walking on a beach, needing no artifice to make her look beautiful.

      But there was more to it than that.

      She’d sensed someone was watching her. He’d been the watcher often enough in what he thought of as his former life to know how subjects looked when they suspected the unwelcome presence of an observer. He could see it in her eyes. In the angle of her jaw. In the way she held her hair back from her face. Wariness. Fear. Distress.

      And more.

      Determination. Defiance. An attitude that, despite everything, said, Hey, pal, don’t screw with me.

      “Goddammit,” Falco growled.

      Then he grabbed his cell phone and arranged for a chartered plane to fly him to the West Coast first thing in the morning.

      Chapter Two

      ELLE HAD spent most of the morning in bed with a stranger.

      The stranger was tall and good-looking and maybe he was a good kisser. She didn’t really know.

      The thing was, she didn’t like kissing. She knew less about it than, she figured, 98 percent of the female population of the United States over the age of sixteen, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know how to make kissing seem fantastic, especially with a guy who looked like this.

      Kissing, the same as walking and talking, laughing and crying and all the other things an actress did, was part of the job. She had to remember that. This was a movie. Kissing the man in whose arms she lay was, yes, part of the job.

      No question that women everywhere would change places with her in a heartbeat. Fans, other actresses…Chad Scott was world-famous. He was box office gold. And, for this scene, at least, he was all hers.

      Elle knew how lucky she was. She hated herself for not being able to get into character this morning. Love scenes were always tough but today…

      Today, things were not going well at all.

      It wasn’t her co-star’s fault. She’d worried he might be all walking, talking ego, but Chad had turned out to be a nice guy.

      He’d shaken her hand when they were introduced days ago, apologized for arriving after everyone else. She knew he hadn’t had to do that. They’d spent five minutes in small talk. Then they’d run their lines. Finally, they’d shot their first scene, which was actually a middle scene in the film. Movie scenes were rarely shot sequentially.

      Today, they were shooting their first love scene. It was, she knew, pivotal to the story.

      The set was simple, just a seemingly haphazard sprawl of blankets spread over the sand near a big Joshua cactus. She was wearing a strapless slip; the camera would only catch her head, her arms and her bare shoulders, suggesting that she was naked. Chad was shirtless and wearing jeans. They were surrounded by a mile of electrical cable, reflectors and boom mikes, and the million and one people it took to film even the simplest scene. Antonio Farinelli, as hot a director as existed, had told the two of them he hoped to do the scene in one take.

      So far, there’d been four.

      A sudden gust of wind had ruined the first shot but the three others…Her fault, every one. She’d twice blown her lines; the third time she’d looked over Chad’s shoulder instead of into his eyes.

      Farinelli sounded angrier each time he yelled, “Cut.”

      Elle sat up, waiting while the director spoke with the lighting guy. Her co-star sat up, too, and stretched. Chad had been really good about all the delays. He’d obviously sensed she was having a problem and he’d made little jokes at his own expense. She knew they were meant to put her at ease. Heck, he said, I’m pretty sure I shaved this morning. And don’t feel bad, kid, my wife once told me the ceiling needed paint at a moment just like this.

      Everyone who heard him laughed because he was not just a hot property, he was a hot guy. Elle laughed, too. At least, she did her best to fake it. She was an actress. Illusion was everything.

      In real life, she could never have lain in a man’s arms and gazed into his eyes as he brought his mouth to hers, but then, reality was a bitch.

      And reality was the phone call that had awakened her at three o’clock that morning.

      “Darling girl,” the low male voice had whispered, “did you get the picture? Did you get my note?” A low, terrible laugh. “You’re waiting for me, aren’t you, sugar?”

      Her heart had slammed into her throat. She’d thrown the telephone on the floor as if it were a scorpion that had crept in under the motel room door. Then she’d run to the bathroom and vomited.

      Now, all she could hear was that voice in her head. All she could see was that mutilated ad from the magazine, the note nobody knew about. Bad enough Farinelli knew about the ad. If only he hadn’t walked into her on-set trailer just as she’d opened the innocent-looking white envelope she’d found propped against the mirror of her makeup table.

      “Elle,” Farinelli had said briskly, “about tomorrow’s schedule…”

      But she wasn’t listening. The blood had drained from her head. She’d been as close to fainting as she’d ever been in her life.

      “Elle?” Farinelli had said, and he’d plucked the envelope and what she’d taken out of it from her hand.

      “Madre di Dio,” he’d said, his words harsh with fury. “Where did this come from?”

      She had no idea. Once she got her breath back, she told him that. A crazy person must have sent it. She’d had nasty little notes before, especially after the Bon Soir lingerie ads, but this marked-up photo…

      Still, anything was possible. Her face was out there. In those two-year-old ads and now in stuff the publicity people for Dangerous